- 18+
Imperial Earth
by
A r t h u r C. C l a r k e
Contents
I
Titan
01
A Shriek In The Night
p005
02
Dynasty
p008
03
Invitation To A Centennial
p011
04
The Red Moon
p014
05
The Politics of Time And Space
p016
06
By The Bonny, Bonny Banks of Lock Hellbrew
p019
07
A Cross of Titanite
p023
08
Children of The Corridors
p027
09
The Fatal Gift
p030
10
World's End
p034
II
Transit
11
Sirius
p037
12
Last Words
p041
13
The Longest Voyage
p043
14
Songs of Empire
p047
15
At The Node
p050
16
Port Van Allen
p054
III
Terra
17
Washington, D.C.
p057
18
Embassy
p060
19
Mount Vernon
p062
20
The Taste of Honey
p067
21
History Lesson
p070
22
Budget
p073
23
Daughters of The Revolution
p076
24
Calindy
p080
25
Mystery Tour
p085
26
Primeval Forest
p090
27
The Ghost From The Grand Banks
p096
28
Akhenaton And Cleopatra
p100
29
Party Games
p102
30
The Rivals
p108
31
The Island of Dr. Mohammed
p112
32
Golden Reef
p116
33
Sleuth
p120
34
Star Day
p123
35
A Message From Titan
p126
36
The Eye of Allah
p130
37
Meeting At Cyclops
p133
38
The Listeners
p138
39
Business And Desire
p143
40
Argus Panoptes
p149
41
Independence Day
p156
42
The Mirror of The Sea
p159
IV
Titan
43
Homecoming
p163
"Remember them as they were; and write them off."
—Ernest Hemingway
"For every man has business and desire."
— Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4
Part One
Titan
1
A Shriek In The Night
Duncan McKenzie was ten years old when he found the magic number. It was pure chance; he had
intended to call Grandma Ellen, but he had been careless and his fingers must have touched the wrong
keys. He knew at once that he had made a mistake, because Grandma's viddy had a two-second delay,
even on Auto/Record. This circuit was live immediately.
Yet there was no ringing tone, and no picture. The screen was completely blank, with not even a
speckling of interference. Duncan guessed that he had been switched into an audio-only channel, or had reached a station where the camera was disconnected. In any case, this certainly wasn't Grandma's
number, and he reached out to break the circuit.
Then he noticed the sound. At first, he thought that someone was breathing quietly into the
microphone at the far end, but he quickly realized his mistake. There was a random, inhuman quality
about this gentle susurration; it lacked any regular rhythm, and there were long intervals of complete silence.
As he listened, Duncan felt a growing sense of awe. Here was something completely outside his
normal, everyday experience, yet he recognized it almost at once. In his ten years of life, the impressions of many worlds had been imprinted on his mind, and no one who had heard this most evocative of sounds
could ever forget it. He was listening to the voice of the wind, as it sighed and whispered across the lifeless landscape a hundred meters above his head.
Duncan forgot all about Grandma, and turned the volume up to its highest level. He lay back on the
couch, closed his eyes, and tried to project himself into the unknown, hostile world from which he was protected by all the safety devices that three hundred years of space technology could contrive. Someday, when he had passed his survival tests, he would go up into that world and see with his own eyes the lakes and chasms and low-lying orange clouds, lit by the thin, cold rays of the distant sun. He had looked
forward to that day with calm anticipation rather than excitement — the Makenzies were noted for their lack of excitement — but now he suddenly realized what he was missing. So might a child of Earth, on
some dusty desert far from the ocean, have pressed a shell against his ear and listened with sick longing to the music of the unattainable sea.
There was no mystery about the sound, but how was it reaching him? It could be coming from any of
the hundred million square kilometers lying above his head. Somewhere — perhaps in an abandoned
construction project or experimental station — a live microphone had been left in circuit, exposed to the freezing, poisonous winds of the world above. It was not likely to remain undetected for long; sooner or later it would be discovered and disconnected. He had better capture this message from the outside while it was still there; even if he knew the number he had accidentally called, he doubted if he could ever establish the circuit again.
The amount of audio-visual material that Duncan had stored under MISC was remarkable, even for an
inquisitive ten-year-old. It was not that he lacked organizing ability — that was the most celebrated of all the Makenzie talents — but he was interested in more things than he knew how to index. He had now
begun to discover, the hard way, that information not properly classified can be irretrievably lost.
He thought intently for a minute, while the lonely wind sobbed and moaned and brought the chill of
space into his warm little cubicle. Then he tapped out ALPHA INDEX* WIND SOUNDS* PERM STORE #.
From the moment he touched the # or EXECUTE key, he had begun to capture that voice from the
world above. If all went well, he could call it forth again at any time by using the index heading WIND